Not properly mix brands to try something new

At a new local pet shop that has opened here in town the owner/clerk gave me some samples of Wellness cat food to try on The Sammycat and Oscar. Her suggestion was not to mix it with their regular diet. I personally think this would be sucide for their digestive system. Her reasoning was that the ingredients are so much better than their regular diet that it wouldn't make their stomaches upset.

It has always been my understanding that when you try new foods for the cats or any animal for that matter you are supposed to mix them to keep their stomaches from getting upset. We shall see if The Sammycat will even try this food but I do know that I will not just give it to them without a mix of their regular food in there. Has anyone ever heard of not blending the two different brands?

Yknow, I yell at my neighbor all the time because she feeds her cats a WIDE variety of different brands of wet foods. All really good quality food but so many different kinds.

Her cats are perfectly healthy and normal.. even though I insist to her that its not good for them

The reason most Vets and ect. say to do this is because most animals don't handle change to well. So in order to get the used to the new food you mix a little of the new brand with the old food and gradually increase the new brand to more then the old brand weeding out the old brand completly. I also feed my cats a variaty and have never had any problems with sick tummies. Just one really picky eater and a kitten that doesn't care as long as it fills his belly.

I just switched my kitties and the vet said I did not have to mix either. I'm going to mix a little because I notice one of them isn't too happy with the change, but I guess it's not necessary. (I always thought it was too!)

If you are making a drastic change (say all dry to all canned) you need to do a gradual changeover. Otherwise as others have said, the main reason for slow changes is that many cats are not thrilled with changes at all. The gradual change helps them adjust. I have two cats right now - one would eat anything with no fuss, the other has eaten one thing for 20 yrs & she wont' evne consider other possibilities.
Deb E

2 1/2 years ago, Snowball was diagnosed with early kidney disease and his diet was changed to K/D out of necessity. The vet told me to begin the change by mixing the K/D and Snowball's regular food half and half, and then to gradually keep increasing the K/D while I was eliminating his regular food.

My concern mostly with trying to switch foods is The Sammycat. He was raised on Iams kitten and then Iams adult and Iams Weight control to get his chunky backside down. So far it has been working great for him.

I have tried other brands for him and he just will not eat them. I don't know if it is because he was started out on Iams or if he really doesn't like the taste of other brands? He will not eat any wet food at all. I had several tins of wet food here that I had bought for him and eventually Oscar consumed all of them after I got him since The Sammycat wouldn't eat them. Oscar will eat anything I give him, he isn't picky at all.

Maybe the old saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it" should be applied here for The Sammycat and just continue to give him what he likes to eat. I was just thinking about trying him on a different brand that the ingredients was more appealing to what I have been reading about. Oh well back to the drawing board

My experience is that any drastic change gives mine diarrehea and/or stinky poop for a while (regardless if they like it or not). Therefore I'm a die-hard Science Diet fan, whether it be kitten, adult, senior or KD. When I switch between these, I mix the new stuff in gradually over 30 days.

I wouldn't pay attention to the clerk at the store - I would suspect they are getting commission for selling it and if you mix it, it means less sales to them (sorry, I'm skeptical at all marketing plows).

Originally posted by Momofmany
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I wouldn't pay attention to the clerk at the store - I would suspect they are getting commission for selling it and if you mix it, it means less sales to them (sorry, I'm skeptical at all marketing plows).

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I'm inclined to agree with this statement. She guranteed me that The Sammycat will eat this brand and love it. So far when I gave him just a few of the kibble he turned his nose up at it and walks away. He is one tough cookie when it comes to his regular groceries

Whether you should mix or not really depends on your cats. Our cat demands variety (he eats 3 different dry brands and 3 or 4 different brands of canned food of varying flavors every week, and won't eat any dry food except Hill's for more than 3 months), and he's never experienced stomach upset or diarrhea from the change. At the other extreme, my parents had a cat who only ate the canned chicken flavor of a particular brand (I forget what it was called, but they always bought it at Wal-Mart - Country something?). Anyway, that developed into a real problem when Ginger got older and the vet said she had to have a "senior" cat food. She wouldn't eat it. Period. One year they had a tremendous blizzard, and the stores were having trouble getting supplies of various products. My mother panicked when she ran low on Ginger's food, and ended up calling everybody she knew (and some she didn't), begging for them to sell her that food if they had it. These are prime examples of behaviors described in a very interesting book entitled "Cat Watching", written by animal behaviorist Desmond Morris (I have the German translation, so I don't know the ISBN of the English original). In short, I don't think there is an "iron rule". Some cats require that you introduce new foods slowly, and others prefer the new food to be "unadulterated".

when i'm trying a new food, to see if they like it or not I give them a few kibbles as a treat. If they gobble the food up they like it, if they let it sit there then I know we don't have a winner. So far everyones favorite is purina one hairball control. Well, there real favorite is purina one kitten, but they are getting past that age!